Shades of Gray - 1911 Ann Arbor

Only black-and-whites and a few old tales tell the history of this 1911 Ann Arbor

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

Art French wasn't sure what to make of his new acquisition. His cousin, Ben, had died a couple of years before, and Ben's widow, Joan, called up Art to have him come take a look at what she had in her carport. The house Joan and Ben shared lay just a few miles down the road from Art, in an exclusive section of Ann Arbor called Barton Hills. Edgar Kaiser once allegedly lived in the house, but three decades prior, Ben had replaced Edgar with another artifact of automotive history, one quite a bit more mysterious.
Art had known about the 1911 Ann Arbor since 1965, when Ben bought it--the two remained close, and Art watched as Ben simply left it in his carport, under a cover, but still exposed to the elements. Ben brought it out only a few times, mostly for parades, and did little else with it.
Art knew nothing about it. In fact, nobody seemed to know a thing about it. It shared its name with the Michigan city they lived in, that's it. But Ben left no will when he died, and Art had helped Joan sort the estate, so she imparted the car to him.
While the flathead four-cylinder engine under the hood turned over, it wouldn't run. A brownish-green patina covered the car, the result of some sort of restoration attempted on the car shortly before Ben bought it. But thanks to that same restoration, the car remained complete, down to all three rows of seats, down to the full-length top, down to the wooden planks that served as bedrails. Of course, it sat on four flats, and everything required a full bath and fresh finish, but Art still had it winched onto a rollback and dropped off at his house.
What followed--and what continues today--became a typically frustrating plunge into automotive history that uncovered few clues and even fewer answers. Art started his research by visiting the local Bentley Historical Library. "The first time I visited them, they brought out a box with six sheets of paper in it," he said. "I now have everything they have."
Had he started where most of these inquiries do, with the Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1805-1942, he'd have found just two brief entries for Ann Arbor. One describes the Ann Arbor Automobile Company, announced in the Automobile Review in 1903, but which apparently never produced its $1,250 machine.
The other describes the company that built Art's car, the Huron River Manufacturing Company, but treated it with one paragraph describing the car and a couple of small photos. The description of the car matched Art's--removable seats, produced by the Huron River Manufacturing Company, 25 mph top speed--save for the part about the engine. The Standard Catalog lists it as a two-cylinder engine; Art's car obviously had a four-cylinder Davis engine under the hood.
Art's research into local news archives brought up a few mentions of the Huron River Manufacturing Company, but nothing comprehensive until he came across an article titled "The Brief, Unhappy Life of the Ann Arbor Car," written by Louis Schafer for the September 1988 issue of the Observer, a local monthly magazine.
According to the article, Ann Arbor (the city) took a bit longer than that busier city to the northeast, Detroit, to accept and develop automobiles. Edward Staebler, a bicycle dealer, tried in 1900 to sell the Chicago-based Trimoto in Ann Arbor, but found that it lacked power, so he traded it for a Toledo Steam Carriage.
The same year, Staebler let Howard Coffin, an engineering student at the University of Michigan, use his shop to build another steam car. He built only that one example in 1901, but apparently made a half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt to capitalize on the car in 1902 before returning to his studies. Coffin later went to work for the Olds Motor Works, where he met Roy Chapin; persuaded Erwin Ross Thomas to back their Thomas-Detroit, which later became the Chalmers-Detroit; then talked Joseph Hudson into backing another car, which they named after their benefactor.
Another University of Michigan student, Charles Thomas (no apparent relation to Erwin Thomas), built a couple of automobiles in Ann Arbor in about 1904 and intended commercial production, but never made it to that point.
The next attempt to build a car in Ann Arbor, unsurprisingly, blew in from Detroit. J.P. LaVigne tinkered with cars until about 1905, when he decided to market his latest design, the one-cylinder La Petite, under the banner of the Detroit Automobile Manufacturing Company, from the corner of Rivard and Mullett Streets in Detroit. But after building about 200 runabouts, LaVigne left, later designing the Griswold and his eponymous cyclecar. The Detroit Automobile Manufacturing Company tried to salvage the La Petite in 1906 by extending the wheelbase and renaming it the Paragon, but ultimately sold the business in late 1906 to the Marvel Motor Car Company.
Marvel seemed content with producing the Paragon runabout under its own name, but by early 1907, Marvel declared bankruptcy. Another Detroit automobile manufacturer, Reliance, had decided about the same time to focus instead on trucks (Reliance later became part of GMC and its president, Fred Paige, later started Paige-Detroit), so a new company formed, the Crescent Motor Car Company, to take over production of the Reliance touring car and the Marvel runabout at the corners of Meldrum and Champlain Streets in Detroit.
Crescent continued until September 1908, when the Constantine Motor Car Company took it over. Constantine evolved from the Hawley Automobile Company, which got its start in 1906 in Constantine, Michigan, but moved to Mendon, Michigan, in 1907. Hawley floundered there, so the new company brought the Hawley back to Constantine and bought Crescent, but never intended to build either the Hawley or Crescent designs, instead substituting a runabout of its own design, which it would call the Crescent. Yet Constantine's Crescent never commenced production.
According to Shafer, the old Marvel design did make it out of the fiasco, though, when Ann Arbor resident George Seybold organized a group of investors as the Fawn River Manufacturing Company in February 1910 to buy the La Petite/Paragon/Marvel/Crescent design and materials from the Constantine Motor Car Company. However, Shafer never seemed to unearth a name for this new version of the Marvel.
He did note that former Cadillac employee Dan Seyler had designed another prototype automobile and was testing it in the streets of Ann Arbor at about the same time. Contractor Christian Koch financed the car and seemed ready to lend his name and $50,000 to production of Seyler's car. According to Shafer, Koch and Seyler in the spring of 1910 found a factory site on Wildt Street. Ed Hiscock owned the land.
Koch, however, backed out of the automobile business before production started, and Hiscock threw in with Seybold's group, which had in the meantime announced plans to build cars, light trucks and a Fawn-branded magneto. The group also reconstituted, ditching the Fawn River Manufacturing name and now calling itself the Huron River Manufacturing Company.
According to Shafer, the members of Huron River Manufacturing constituted "a politically prominent and financially experienced group." Hiscock owned a successful local coal and wood company, his brother had served as president of the Ann Arbor Savings Bank for the last decade and Gottlob Luick--vice president of Huron River Manufacturing--had owned a planing mill and lumberyard in Ann Arbor since 1873.
Huron River Manufacturing raised $50,000 in stock sales and immediately set on building a 240-by-40-foot factory on the Wildt Street site, but not for production of the Marvel runabout. David Chipman, the company's secretary, later became the manager of the factory, perhaps due to the fact that he designed, in his words, "an entirely new style of automobile conveyance, a convertible car which combines a capable motor truck with a commodious touring car."
Much like the trucks of the day, Chipman's vehicle used chains to transfer power to the rear wheels and a full bed on a chassis rated at an estimated three-quarters of a ton. But more like a car, it used a front-mounted four-cylinder engine (or, at least, this one did) backed by a planetary transmission. Chipman resolved the difference by creating two output shafts on either side of the transmission from which the chains would derive their power. Two additional bench seats locked into pockets behind the front seat, with each of the rear seats having its own specific latching mechanism, so the middle and the rear seats couldn't be confused. A sort of trunk--really a glorified drawer--pulled out rearward from under the rearmost seat. The full-length top mounted to the rearmost seat, so only in touring car mode could the driver get any shelter--in pickup mode, he sat exposed to the elements. Like many cars before the mid-1910s, the driver commanded the car from the right-hand side.
The top, side curtains and folding windshield all constituted a $50 option. Acetylene headlamps appeared to have come standard, as did a single taillamp mounted so low under the bed, it seemed hardly effective. Most of the body was constructed of wood, with only the hood, fenders and running boards stamped out of steel. Ornate, yet functional, cast hardware, more befitting a country kitchen than a motorized hay-hauler, bedecked the body.
One had appeared on the streets as early as late 1910, becoming a common sight as Chipman perfected his design. That prototype sold for about $1,400, Shafer wrote. A Times News article two weeks later reported that at least four Ann Arbors had been sold: to saloon owner George Heibein, confectioner Justin Trubey, plumber S.C. Andres and to Luick's lumberyard (the latter two with custom truck bodies). Yet Shafer never turned up any total production numbers for 1911 and only committed to less than a dozen sold in 1912. In production guise, the Ann Arbor sold for $975, but shipping costs and assorted charges usually brought the price closer to $2,000, Shafer wrote. For comparison's sake, a Model T touring sold in the neighborhood of $800 at the time.
Art French's research showed that the Wheeler family of Northfield Township--about 10 miles north of Ann Arbor--bought his 1911 Ann Arbor new, which would make at least six, as long as the Wheeler family didn't buy the prototype. He also spoke with a local man, Bernard Ehnis, who remembered parting one out 65 or 70 years ago. And another newspaper article related the fact that C.E. Fousal in Sturgis, Michigan, described as Huron River Manufacturing's representative for Indiana and the Southern states, placed an order for five Ann Arbors; yet Art couldn't determine whether Huron River Manufacturing ever filled the order.
Shafer's article, interestingly, made only one mention of engines in the Ann Arbor: a "unique air-cooled engine." Perhaps the other Ann Arbors did have air-cooled two-cylinder engines--one of the pictures in the Standard Catalog seems to show a very blunt nose on the Ann Arbor--but Art's had a water-cooled four-cylinder engine built by Davis, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What little Art could research on the car, he could find even less on the engine. Apparently, the Davis Manufacturing Company built automobile, locomotive and tractor engines, then in 1914-1916 built a light car called the Vixen, but went back to engine manufacture afterward.
"When I sent this car out for restoration, I asked Jerry (Wysocki of Wysocki Enterprises in Ypsilanti, which handled the majority of the car's restoration) to look for evidence of another engine," Art said. "But he said this car was built with this engine."
Whatever the engine and whatever the reason, the Ann Arbor didn't last long. By December 1912, Huron River Manufacturing ceased Ann Arbor production as the Star Motor Car Company from Augusta, Maine, (no relation to Durant's Star) came into town with the intent to build trucks. Seybold and Luick became corporate officers with Star, which sold a few three-quarter-ton and one-ton chassis-only models before closing shop in 1913 or 1914.
The Wildt Street factory later housed the Parker Chuck Company, which made drill chucks; the Huddy Manufacturing Company, which apparently operated it as a machine shop; and the Arborphone Company, which made radios, before it burned to the ground in either 1929 or 1931. Presumably, whatever documents may have remained burned with the factory.
This car in particular apparently remained with the Wheeler family until 1950, when Ted Balmer of Chelsea bought it. He covered the original gray paint with the brownish-green paint during his restoration, then sold it to Ben French in 1965. Jerry found the original gray paint during the second restoration and had to fabricate a few transmission parts, but aside from the top, seats, side curtains and radiator, everything else remains original to the car.
Art said he continues to seek information about the car, placing ads in the AACA's newsletter and speaking with historians in and around Ann Arbor. "I once knew a woman whose husband was involved with the company, but that was years ago, before I got the car, and before she died, so I never asked her about it," he said. He also regularly takes it out to the Orphan Car Show in Ypsilanti, where he mostly finds himself on the receiving end of questions.
He's pretty sure no other cars and very little additional information exist, but to have gathered what he now knows and to have seen the restoration of this car through, more than 90 years after it left the factory, remains quite the accomplishment.
Owner's View
"It's definitely frustrating not to know much about this car," Art French, a lifelong Ann Arbor resident, said. "I still look for information, and you never know what you'll get or from where.
"I brought this home figuring it would be a good project for my son Chandler and I to work on, but that really didn't work. We just didn't have the skills. We played with it here and there for about three years, but then we finally decided to send it out to Jerry.
"We do drive it--to the Orphan Car Show, to the Rolling Sculpture Show here in Ann Arbor and to Meadow Brook last year. Driving it will wear you out in an hour--it's quite loose, it doesn't accelerate quickly and it doesn't stop too well with just the two-wheel brakes. But I hate trailer queens, and I didn't want this to be a trailer queen.
"But a lot of the people who see it are surprised to know it was built in Ann Arbor. In fact, I get a lot of people asking me if I'm sure I didn't just make it all up."-----Art French
PROS:
Last one left
Runs and drives as intended
History of this car known and documented
CONS:
Last one out of how many, though?
Runs and drives like a truck from 1911
History of the other Ann Arbors murky
Specifications
Base price: $975
Options on car profiled: Top, side curtains, windshield, $50
ENGINE
Type: Davis L-head inline 4, iron block
Displacement: 240.6 cubic inches
Bore x Stroke: 4.125 x 4.500 inches
Compression ratio: N/A
Horsepower @ rpm: 25
Torque @ rpm: N/A
Valvetrain: Solid valve lifters
Main bearings: 4
Fuel system: Single updraft Stromberg (Type C) one-barrel carburetor, gravity feed
Lubrication system: Pressure to the camshaft bearings, splash to the crankshaft rear bearings, manual to the valves
Electrical system: Bosch magneto
Exhaust system: Single
TRANSMISSION
Type: Muncie Gear Works three-speed planetary
Ratios: N/A
DIFFERENTIAL
Type: Jack shafts with limited-slip traction adder running off the transmission, chain drive to rear wheels
Ratio: N/A
STEERING
Type: Worm and gear
Ratio: N/A
Turns, lock-to-lock: 5
Turning circle: 40 yards (est.)
BRAKES
Type: Mechanical, 2-wheel manual drum
Front: None
Rear: 16-inch drum
CHASSIS & BODY
Construction: Body on perimeter frame
Body style: Eight-passenger convertible touring
Layout: Front engine, rear-wheel drive
SUSPENSION
Front: Solid axle; parallel semi-elliptic leaf springs
Rear: Solid axle; parallel elliptic leaf springs
WHEELS & TIRES
Wheels: Kelsey-Hayes detachable wood spoke
Front/Rear: 25 x 4.5 inches
Tires: Goodrich Silvertown
Front/Rear: 34 x 4.5 inches
WEIGHTS & MEASURES
Wheelbase: 108 inches
Overall length: 157 inches
Overall width: 66 inches
Overall height: 86 inches
Front track: 56 inches
Rear track: 56 inches
Shipping weight: 2,140 pounds
CAPACITIES
Crankcase: 8 quarts
Cooling system: 14 quarts
Fuel tank: 10 gallons
CALCULATED DATA
Bhp per c.i.d.: 0.10
Weight per bhp: 85.60 pounds
Weight per c.i.d.: 8.89 pounds
PRODUCTION
Anywhere from five to 12 or more Ann Arbors were built in 1911 and 1912. One survives.
PERFORMANCE
Acceleration: N/A
Top speed: 11-13 mph

This article originally appeared in the October, 2006 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.